Transcending the body: music, chastity and ecstasy in Reni’s St Cecilia playing the violin

Abstract

Abstract After St Cecilia’s reportedly incorrupt body was excavated in Rome in 1599, Cardinal Paolo Emilio Sfondrato commissioned a series of artworks in her honour. The last of these, Guido Reni’s St Cecilia playing the violin (1606), shows her gazing upwards, violin in hand, in a state of musical ecstasy. Highlighting the importance of this painting, which thus far has received little attention from musicologists, this article seeks to unpack the ambiguities inherent in Reni’s portrayal of the virgin martyr as a violinist. Taking the complex tradition linking Cecilia with music as a point of departure, the article examines the portrait in the context of contemporary attitudes to spiritual listening and women’s performance. This brings into focus the network of ideas about music-induced transcendence that would have informed visual readings of the painting; conversely, it also shows that the virginal saint was not immune to sensualizing interpretations. Finally, the study explores the ways in which the portrait references the saint’s miraculous body, suggesting that Reni sought to emphasize Cecilia’s sacred chastity and to gesture towards a numinous music unknowable by the senses.